`Weedotherapy` Works: Government Should Legalize Marijuana As Medicine

COMMENTARY

March 6, 1993|By TOM SANDER, Editorial Writer

Elvy Musikka of Hollywood is a walking billboard promoting her pet cause -- legalization of marijuana as medicine.

The blonde, 53-year-old mother of two regularly wears a black T-shirt picturing a huge green marijuana leaf and the words ``Medicate, don`t regulate.`` A gold marijuana leaf dangles from a neck chain. She proudly fingers her beige blazer, saying, ``This is made out of hemp, too.`` (Hemp is a fiber made from the stalks of marijuana plants.)

``Here`s my stash,`` she says, handing you a small U.S. government-supplied metal cylinder with 300 U.S.-government grown Cannabis sativa cigarettes that she gets free each month with a doctor`s prescription and the full knowledge of federal drug agencies and the Hollywood Police Department.

She smokes four to six cigarettes daily, eats the same number baked into homemade cookies, and credits the drug with saving her eyesight from glaucoma.

Curious, you pull one cigarette out. No thin, amateur, hand-rolled joints with pointy ends. These are machine-made, unfiltered, with crimped ends to keep leaves from falling out.

You take a sniff; the pungent odor, a throwback to the `60s, is unmistakable. You hand the joint back, making a nervous comment that ``I hope the sheriff isn`t going to bust down the door.``

She hands you a copy of her prescription from Dr. Paul Palmberg of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami.

There, he ordered a medicine to keep her from going blind: ``Marijuana cigarettes (300 cigs/can).``

Musikka is the first American woman -- and one of only a dozen or so Americans -- still legally getting government marijuana under an old policy that in 1992 was revoked for anyone else.

Last March, in an act of incredible ignorance and insensitivity, the director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ended the ``compassionate use`` program for medical marijuana.

The public and politicians are understandably wary about the harm caused by abuse of illegal drugs. But those feelings shouldn`t be distorted into misguided and ignorant public policies to block legitimate medical uses of marijuana, especially since such uses are permitted for much more dangerous drugs such as cocaine, dilaudid and morphine.

Supporters of medicinal pot call its benefits ``weedotherapy.`` The active ingredient, THC, can not only ease the threat of glaucoma, it can also combat nausea, vomiting and weight loss in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and in some AIDS patients. It can help reduce muscle spasms for sufferers of quadriplegia and multiple sclerosis. It can open lung passages of asthma patients.

Musikka joined this cause out of desperation. She was diagnosed with glaucoma in 1975. Medicine and other treatments weren`t helping, so in 1976, she turned to marijuana and got relief, later growing her own backyard plants.

Five years ago this month, Hollywood police arrested her for possession of narcotics. Broward Circuit Judge Mark Polen kindly ordered the charges dismissed, saying she had a God-given right to preserve her eyesight.

She is justifiably angry: That she had to suffer over a decade of increasing blindness until her right to use an effective medicine was legalized. That so many of her friends have either died, gone blind or suffered pain because they lacked legal access to an effective drug. That other friends got arrested and jailed just for providing patients with with helpful medicine. And that her own government is so blinded by its war on drugs that it can`t show compassion toward suffering people or common sense about a good use for an illegal drug.

She relishes the role of outspoken pioneer in this worthy cause, vowing to ``knock down the walls of ignorance.`` She travels widely as part of the Cannabis Action Network`s ``Hemp Tour,`` educating the public and helping collect more than 75,000 signatures on petitions supporting medical marijuana.

On Thursday, March 18, at noon, the ``Hemp Tour`` will come to South Florida. Musikka and others will speak at a rally at the County Courthouse in downtown Fort Lauderdale. They`ll hand out brochures, sell T-shirts and buttons and ask for petition signatures. And they may provide a look at a traveling ``Hemp Museum,`` illustrating some little-known beneficial uses of hemp as paper, fiber, food, fuel and medicine. It`s worth a look and a listen.

Musikka rightly laments that President Bill Clinton supports the current ban on medical marijuana. There is hope, though; Clinton`s unconfirmed surgeon general nominee, Dr. Jocelyn Elders, is an outspoken advocate for the cause. Proposed congressional hearings on medical marijuana, as well as appointment of more sensitive drug enforcement leaders, could also help a lot.

While marijuana has medical benefits, and is not a killer drug like crack cocaine, it is hardly harmless. The key ingredient, THC, is a powerful mind- altering chemical. Users can become physically and psychologically dependent. Drug experts consider pot an entry-level drug, with some users going on to harder drugs.

Still, it`s odd that the drugs that cause the most death and destruction are legal. They are called alcohol and tobacco.

Meanwhile, until capricious government policies change, in the words of one of Musikka`s songs, ``There are patients who are dying ... who are crying in frustration when there is a medication that could help them feel all right.``